Eat The Vine That Ate The South
The US government introduced kudzu into the South in the 1930s for erosion control and paid for fields of it to be planted. Kudzu goes dormant in the winter in its native Japan, but the South's heat and humidity proved to be ideal year-round growing conditions making this already naturally fast-growing plant spread so rapidly that it begun to smother crops, bridges, houses, powerlines—anything that stood in its way.
Almost 80 years later, hundreds of thousands of dollars are spent each year trying to destroy it, but Tanya Bricking Leach of the AP has found people who've decided to just eat the vine that's eating the South: "Nancy Basket, a part-Cherokee artist and basket maker in Walhalla, S.C., may not be getting rich off kudzu, but she does enjoy eating it. She says her heritage prompted her to treat kudzu with respect, rather than as a menace. Now she hosts kudzu luncheons where guests feast on kudzu quiche with a rice crust or kudzu pasta. "People just don't know how to use it," she says. "We need to use something in our back yard instead of making fun of it and calling it names."
If you live somewhere kudzu grows, Juanitta Baldwin has written a cookbook you might want to pick up called
